Rising: Dum Dum Girls

In 2008, Dum Dum Girls started out as the one-woman garage-pop project of a California girl who goes by Dee Dee (real name: Kristin Gundred, pictured at left). Speaking about the humble origins of her MySpace page, Dee Dee says, "I just thought Dum Dum Girls was a cool name and I wanted to reserve it."

Since then, the 27-year-old singer-songwriter has recorded and released a batch of punk-smeared girl-group tunes for tiny indies Captured Tracks, Zoo Music, and Hozac, before getting signed by big indie Sub Pop last summer. She also put together a full band to bring her creation to the stage that includes drummer Frankie Rose, who used to play with Crystal Stilts and Vivian Girls. The quartet are set to play a handful of shows in advance of the Dum Dum Girls' debut LP, I Will Be, which hits March 30.

Produced by Dee Dee and industry vet Richard Gottehrer (who co-wrote "My Boyfriend's Back" and produced key albums by Blondie and the Go-Go's), I Will Be aims at a reverbed haven somewhere between bad ass 1960s girl gang the Shangri-Las and 1980s distortion gods Jesus and Mary Chain. The taught attack is highlighted by Dee Dee's vocals, which are both bubblegum and tough. The one-time "square, all-black, straight As, alterna-teen nerd" grew up listening to Hole and performing musical theater, light opera, and jazz before settling on her current leather-clad guise. Click on to read our Q&A with the Dum Dum Girls leader, in which she talks about singing in German, hating sweatpants, and loving Mariah Carey:

Pitchfork: Your music has a very 1960s feel. Were you always into stuff from that era?

Dee Dee: Yeah. I was super into Mariah Carey when I was in fifth grade, but once my dad showed me how to use the record player a year later, I became instantly obsessed with Jefferson Airplane and Grace Slick. I sang "Somebody to Love" in the shower every single night for a whole year. I just love the music that came out of that time: early Stones, Beatles for Sale, Peter, Paul and Mary. I don't feel like music's doomed now but sometimes I think, "I just can't imagine it getting better than 'Rain' by the Beatles." Does that mean I'm going to have kids and tell them my favorite song is from, like, 95 years ago? [laughs] That's fucking weird.

Pitchfork: Dum Dum Girls' music up to this point has been extremely lo-fi, but your upcoming album is a bit more polished and refined. Why did you make that stylistic switch?

DD: The gnarliness of my earliest stuff was a little unintentional; everything I've put out so far I was just working with what I had access to. I like how lo-fi music duplicates the warm analog sounds of my favorite old records but I'm not so loyal to the concept that I'm against improving sound quality. I'm sure as I progress the sound may get cleaner but right now, I'm still interested in having it rough but never overwhelmingly so. I consider myself an amateur pop songwriter and I want that to come through, too.

Pitchfork: Based on the fact that you use a stage name and your band's chic, uniform look, it seems like you're trying to put some distance between your everyday identity and your identity as a performer.

DD: The distance thing is partially due to the fact that I'm pretty shy and I've struggled with extreme stage fright in the past. So I just have to go onstage in a different head space so I'm not as self-aware; I'm not really myself, I'm being this person in this band. And getting gussied up helps, too. I'm just too much of a fan of good style to get up there in sweatpants [laughs].

Pitchfork: I feel like some indie rock bands make a point out of making it seem like they don't care about how they look.

DD: Yeah, figuring out how to make it look like you don't care is probably harder than me telling my band mates, "Find a sweet black vintage dress and we'll match!" [laughs] They're three of my best friends, so we have similar tastes anyway. I might have seen it as vanity or superficial in the past, but if somebody thinks wearing pretty dresses onstage somehow discredits us that's pretty absurd.

Pitchfork: Were you in a lot of bands before Dum Dum Girls?

DD: Not so much. I wanted to be in bands my whole life but it took a while to make it happen. Now, I'm at the point where I'm comfortable about what I can do on my own-- not that it's terribly complicated-- and just being able to write songs I'm proud of and finding some women to play with is exciting. It really didn't seem possible for most of my life because I really didn't know anybody in bands except for guys, and they weren't terribly forthcoming with encouragement. The "us against the world" thing is something I'm enjoying for the first time. [Gundred was previously a member of the band Grand Ole Party -- Ed.]

Pitchfork: Was it imperative for you to get an all-female band for this project?

DD: It was. I played a few shows with some boys that are good friends but I wanted it to have that all-girl component all along. It was a pretty daunting task. It came down to me really wanting to play with [former Vivian Girls and Crystal Stilts drummer] Frankie [Rose]. She and I have a similar background-- we were musical theater and choir nerds, which is why we're both so obsessed with harmony. I don't think there will ever be enough women in music.

Pitchfork: There's a song on I Will Be called "Oh Mein M" that's sung entirely in German. What's the story behind it?

DD: I was writing a song about love at first sight, but the way it was coming out seemed too simple. So I was like, "Well fuck, what if I wrote it in German?" I went to school in Germany for a year during college and I've always enjoyed writing in German. And when I went back and examined what I'd written, it was actually an improvement over the English version. I had my good friend make sure there weren't any embarrassing grammatical errors.

Pitchfork: Who is the woman on the cover of the album?

DD: That's my mom. It was taken in 1972. I was visiting my parents and going through my mom's photo albums and I just turned the page and saw that picture and was like, "Something about that is exactly my record."

Pitchfork: How does she feel about it?

DD: I think she's flattered and amused that I would choose her, though she thinks that picture is an odd pick. The back story is that she and her girl friends had decided to take senior portraits for their college yearbook on a whim and they all went out and bought giant eyelashes-- that's why she has that weird look on her face, that's her trying to deal with the weight of falsies.

DD: Oddly enough, yeah. I'm sure that I'll get some shit talking for that, but I'm not concerned. It's like, "Fuck yeah, that's my mom!" [laughs] I initially wanted to use a still from an early 60s cult Italian film about women in jail called 99 Women, but we couldn't get the rights to it. The whole concept of the album was going to be based on this particular still, and it was going to be called Jail La La. But as soon as I realized we couldn't use that picture, it seemed kind of absurd that I'd been planning on titling the album just because of a picture. It wouldn't have had any kind of emotion or statement behind it. And as soon as I thought of using the song "I Will Be" for the title of the record along with that photo, I was like, "That's what I want to say."

Pitchfork: While a lot of the sounds and images associated with the album suggest the past, the title gives it some forward momentum.